You Want Outside The Box? Try This One On For Size!

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

“Soon, everybody will be reading newspapers on their portable electronic devices.”

No. No they won’t.

Not soon, and not for a long, long time either. If ever.

And “everybody?” No chance.

The electric toothbrush hasn’t made the manual one obsolete yet. And I wouldn’t wait for it either.

Newspapers will be around in the current, inky “analog” format for a good 50 years or more.

Why do I say this with such certainty? Because a printed newspaper is a SUPERIOR product in almost every way to a “newspaper” you can get for free online.

Let’s count the ways..

1. It can “download” probably 10x the content in pictures and text of even the fastest computer and T1 connection. Flip. You just “downloaded” 8 stories, 3 charts, and 5 big pictures in about 1 second. Flip. You just did it again. The browsing of the newspaper is the most under-rated aspect of “reading” it. Ho do you find interesting stories you would otherwise never read? By having them catch your eye. This doesn’t happen on a website.

2. The newspaper does not require batteries, a wi-fi connection, or a computer. It works on the bus. It works in the bathroom. It works on the beach. It works and works and works and works.

3. You can share pieces of your newspaper over lunch with friends.

4. The newspaper travels very easily. Under your arm, in your handbag, even tucked in the back of your pants a golf tournament or baseball game.

5. The newspaper will not break. It does not require a password.

6. The newspaper has wonderful secondary uses. Flyswatter. A dry seat on wet grass. Fish wrap. Spray paint protection. Fake volcanoes for science projects. Packing material for boxes. And on and on….

This wonderful product, is NOT going away. Trust me.

It’s like what people would say about my industry, radio. “It’s a walking dinosaur! It’s not long for this modern world!”

Oh yeah? Until they outlaw the car, and that thing called a “commute” then radio is gonna still be a pretty spiffy thing to have.

Will more people be reading newspapers electronically? Sure. But only if newspapers continue their folly of providing this information for free.

It’s their death spiral, not mine. So they can ignore what I am about to say as they wish.

They are cutting off generations of future newspaper readers, because they are not trained to read a newspaper. They cherry pick what they want via the internet. They don’t even know what they are missing, because you have enabled them to make your actual product – a physical newspaper - irrelevant.

Your product is not “news.” News is all around these days, and of varying quality. Your product is a news-PAPER! A tangible, foldable, browseable, cheap, voluminous daily source of information that you cannot get from other places. With coverage, connections, reporters, columnists, and traditions that cannot be duplicated.

Kids won’t stop reading. This is fallacy. Not every young punk kid is a text-messaging zombie who watches 80 hours of YouTube a week. Plenty of them are smart, well mannered, and like to read and learn.

Meanwhile, more nimble dot-com’s come along and grab your hard fought content, slice it, dice it, comment up on it, repost it, email it, and generally rape that content for absolutely nothing!

Stop the madness. Just print the paper. Get out of the internet. Keep your core readers, and grow the next generation. Make no apologies. Chalk it up to an experiment tried, and a lesson learned.

You know, once upon a time, McDonalds experimented with selling a “McPizza.” I kid you not. They got smart, and stopped that pretty quickly.

Slim down your journalistic approach to suit this new sustainable reality. Close down far flung foreign offices that track the regional conflicts in East Krapistan. Let an international service do that. Besides, those low level conflicts have been going on forever, and rarely if ever affect your actual readers. You are not National Geographic. Get back to what matters in your hometown.

Newspapers have a tremendous edge over every other quasi-journalistic website out there. It’s called “printing presses.” No website would open a print version of their “newspaper” and invest in printers, ink, delivery trucks, and the like.

This is your world. Live in it. Dominate it.

If you MUST have a web presence, then make it no more than 3 pages. Front page of the site is one good story for free from each major section. Then teaser stories for what’s in the print version. One page for coupons. One page for Classifieds. That’s it. You could staff the web portion of your newspaper with 6 people.

If blogs want to transcribe a story word for word and post it, then god bless ‘em. Have fun. They’ll never finish doing that to your whole paper in a day. And there’s another one coming tomorrow. Good luck keeping up.

You have a constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You don’t have a right to read free newspapers on the internet.

Crack Me Upside the Head With A Ten-Pin Please!

Hey Steaval,

I saw your recent Czabecast on your bowling experience and I am quite offended. ((not really..lol))

((queue the cheesy violin movie music))....the following is very, very true...

You were mocking the entire bowling community on this czabecast, Czaban, and all peoples who worked at a bowling alley. That mechanic you spoke too had to go through fluent training to learn those AMF 82-70 Machines. I once was a bowling mechanic at a bowling alley while I attended Kent State University, and like me,, I am quite sure Steve Solomon is quite offended.

The bowling alley I worked at... Rainbow Lanes in Warren, Ohio -- we busted our butts as mechanics at this crystaline 36 lane house, we worked hard for the money!! A full house every nite,, and ya maybe the house did run like shit.

There were many a days where we even unable to eat our pepperoni rolls from brothers pizza on the clock -- but we managed to survive. Yes, we would sneak to the walk-in cooler for a case of beer every now and then -- but thats besides the point.

And we also came very close to joining the steel workers union for higher wages -- unsuccessful -- but the three of us ((the mechanics)) decided it was in our best interests to stand pat for the time being.

We also had peep holes in the back of the lanes to watch the females bend over, but thats also besides the point -- us mechanics, Solomon, and the entire bowling community are sticking together on this one.

We have rights too. we are educated, BEYOND 3rd grade. lol.

If you would took that pin off of the distributor ((that finger thingie that sorts the pins)) I would of threw out of the bowling center, which lurch should of done, because all knowledgeable mechanics know you need 20 pins in each machine.

-- I'm kidding fat man.. keep up the great work. :)

-- Mike
"The 330"
Warren, Ohio

REACT: I am glad I got this email, because I wanted to address what came off poorly in that video. Namely, my comment about “what grade did you have to drop out of” to become a bowling alley mechanic.

I’m a dope. Forgive me.

I couldn’t re-paint the pins with a clearcoat gloss and a step-by-step manual. These mechanics who know how to tame a beast like these AMF pinsetters are certainly no dropouts.

In fact, it was always my dream to go behind the back of a bowling alley and see what ingenious mechanical design allowed for the seamless pick up, sorting, and replacement of pins – time after time after time.

And I am sure they work their asses off night after night, getting dirty, putting out fires, and going deaf in the process. CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

I suppose what struck me when I saw the mechanic, was that it smacked of Igor underneath the bell tower, pulling the rope. I probably assumed that pinsetters were sufficiently tuned to run without full time supervision behind the lanes.

So for all the hard working pinsetters, mechanics, and guys under the bell towers of modern life, I apologize.

If you want to know what profession allows for 3rd grade dropouts?

Radio show hosts. That’s who.

Dopes.

Patriots Fleeced On Cassel Deal? Think Again...

Now, for a rare moment of Peter King praise. King points out that the Patriots are so in tune with real player value, that they don't just mindlessly accumulate as many high draft picks as possible.

The accumulate a lot of relatively inexpensive high draft picks. It's partly why Belicheck didn't break the bank for Matt Cassell, taking only a high second, and not holding out for a first. Shrewd...

KING (Edited by me, to get to the point..)

Back to Belichick. New England now has four picks in the first two rounds -- the 23rd, 34th, 47th and 58th. Belichick wants late ones and twos because the difference in talent between the top of the draft and pick 34 is not nearly as big as the difference in money. And the third pick in the draft this year would command a bigger contract than Tom Brady's. Thus, New England has no use for very high picks.

Let's examine the financial commitment those four picks (23, 34, 47, 58) required last year, and compare it to the top of the draft:

Pick Guaranteed/Avg. $$ Per Year
23 $7.12m $1.97m
34 $3.07m $1.17m
47 $2.20m $904,000
58 $1.72m $857,000
Total $14.11m $4.94m

The eighth pick in the draft last year, defensive end Derrick Harvey, got $17.47 million guaranteed in a contract averaging $4.6 million a year. In essence, in the way the NFL pays rookies, the eighth pick's compensation is equivalent to the combined pay of the 23rd, 34th, 47th and 58th picks. Insane. Imagine if someone tells you they'd trade the eighth pick in the draft for a lower first-round pick and three second-round picks. You'd do it in a second. The Patriots will draft at least a couple of keeper players on Day 1, and they'll have the kind of salary manageability with those players that great teams with big stars have to have.

REACT: Good, Peter. Gooooooddddd boyyyy!!! Come here, Petey. Good boy.

Indeed, the Patriots are like a pinball wizard, that knows not only how to play the machine, but can execute subtle little bumps to nudge the ball into JUST the right spot.

When I think of how they operate, I envision a short-bus Vinny Cerrato just mashing the flippers mindlessly on the Skins pinball machine.

Oh yeah, in a much lesser hyped move, the Skins had to release Jason Taylor yesterday after he refused to accept an off-season workout clause that would keep him in Ashburn, and not Miami.

So, if you are keeping score at home...

Jason Taylor for a 2nd and 6th round draft pick.
Redskins Record: 8-8
Games Played: 13
Sacks: 3 1/2
Salary: $8.5 million.

Good times... good times.

That 2nd and 6th could have turned into another Chris Cooley and Chris Horton. But hey, the draft is over-rated, just ask Vinny.